


Odette (the wealthy)

by hauntedpoem



Series: Gaunts & Riddles (& sometimes Malfoys) [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A Chest of Riddles Universe, Arranged Marriage, Cousin Incest, F/M, Forced Marriage, Graphic Description, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Incest, Malfoy Family-centric (Harry Potter), Miscarriage, Odette Malfoy/ Junius Brutus Malfoy - Freeform, POV Odette Malfoy, POV Third Person, Roaring 20s, Unsettling, dark themes, inbreeding, pureblood inbreeding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:08:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29396715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpoem/pseuds/hauntedpoem
Summary: It wasn’t him that had to stare at those… abominations, not his lungs that had to breathe in the blood-stained air afterwards, nor his innermost parts that were bleeding, purging the remnants of their foul union. And for what? For keeping the blood pure, for keeping the fortune within the family?-Optional read afterA Chest of Riddles chapter 11.
Relationships: OFC/OMC, Odette Malfoy/ Junius Brutus Malfoy - Relationship
Series: Gaunts & Riddles (& sometimes Malfoys) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2159907
Kudos: 1





	Odette (the wealthy)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A chest of riddles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16949721) by [hauntedpoem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpoem/pseuds/hauntedpoem). 



> 3rd person POV and unsettling themes: forced marriage, cousin incest, miscarriage, alsocholism.  
> It isn't explicit, however, be warned.

Odette was walking up and down the room.

Up and down she went.

Up and down again, until her toes cramped in those impossible shoes and until her calves numbed to the motion.

It happened again and it would happen again. Ever since she came to this strange country with strange people she did not feel like herself.

*

She woke up in the middle of the night as if stabbed in through her cunt and directly into her entrails. Within moments, she was bleeding out.

No need to wake up the master of the house. No need to make a fuss and see his disappointed face again. No need to hear that old Malfoy hag mumble critically towards her about foreigners and how Odette was a bad batch and how he should have married her distant cousin instead, not his first.

No more shame.

There is nothing as slick as blood, Odette knows. The smell is enough to alert the elves, but she must be quick. She hurls herself out of bed as if she’s a mechanism composed of tissue, tendons like springs, nerves and blood vessels. Sometimes she is a thinking brain, sometimes a pair of eyes that have seen too much and sometimes, a mouth that is often latched shut... but Odette is always a bleeding womb.

She drags herself to the bathroom and hops into the bathtub and then, she waits for it to come, to slide and rupture through her insides like bloody goo. Of course, it hurts, that’s why she bites into the towel and her hands clasp for dear life the margins of the claw-footed tub. She must not make a sound. She must not.

And then, the thing passes. The thing that Malfoy put inside her when he comes at night into her room in just a bathrobe and pushes several times into her body with the grace of a drunken animal. It passes just as painfully. There is an in and there is an out. She looks down at it and she could see not just the badly formed limbs but the missing parts again.

She should perhaps preserve this one in a jar and show it to Brutus whenever he’s come to collect it from her. Show him exactly what he’s putting in her womb. A monster.

She heaves and it’s hard to keep silent when all she wants to do is scream and vomit. Odette takes her wand from the marble slab of the bathtub and then commences the staple ritual of every couple and so months: Evanesco, Tergeo, Scourgify.

She washes.

Her back hurts and her cunt bleeds. She summons her sanitary products and then dresses in her favourite pair of clothes. She makes the bed with new, white sheets and charms the others to roll into a big pile of cloth and then she vanishes them, one by one. All her windows are open so that the rusty, metallic smell is slowly replaced by the frigid air of dawn.

She places her wand on her chest. That’s the only thing, the only thing that never betrayed her.

Agonizingly slow, she eases into a chair and summons the merino stole her mother crocheted for her when she was a little girl. When she closes her eyes, she imagines she’s elsewhere.

*

He’s drinking, even at breakfast. That disgusting, grey creature pours him whiskey. She hates it on his breath, it’s acrid, like vomit. It burns the air around him.

He noticed her paleness and how careful she took a seat at the opposite side of their table. Of course, he noticed. What is there left for him to do except count his fortune and read his morning journals? Again, he didn’t ask whether she had a good night’s sleep, or whether she was feeling something, anything. He looked at her and then he clicked his fingers and the creature that serves him came bearing the glass with his drink.

He doesn’t look at her now, he looks everywhere but at her.

Odette could not bear it but she eats and drinks and wishes, wishes she could just vanish from this bleak and horrible place and see the sun again.

*

The girl, Emmeline, offers her some respite although she is a bit too old to be a daughter to Odette. She teaches her spellwork and potions, she sees about her education and her manners. She teaches her French and painting, dance and poetry.

She talks to her about her world, her world before she met her cousin, Junius Brutus. She tells her that she was allowed to dream and she could be everything she wanted and that Emmeline should never allow her uncle, that ignoble, vile man, to rule her life and order her about.

Odette could do with someone like her for company. But the girl sometimes complained. She wanted air, she wanted to amble and spend what little allowance she had in the shops, she wanted to meet with others her age and play and dance and fall in love.

The girl wanted, and she was so, so very young, not unlike her when she heard the news of her betrothal to Junius Brutus Malfoy.

Back then, he was a boy himself and she knew him only from a photograph he sent along with his letter written in tremulous cursive as if the nerves got to him and guided his hand instead. He was a bashful, inexperienced adolescent, head full of idealism and boastfulness. But when the time came for her to go to England and fulfil her duty and marry him, she found him a different person.

Odette smiles upon Emmeline when she sees her that morning. She has prepared for her a stack of books and presents. The girl is grateful, not simpering but then she lashes.

"You don't care about me!"

And of course, Odette wants to tell her, that she is wrong but somehow, she keeps her mouth shut like she did all these years at Malfoy Manor.

She sees sadness and confusion in her eyes, fat tears spilling and falling on rosy red cheeks, she sees rage and fear of abandonment but Odette’s done here. This is her parting gift to her: freedom.

*

Up and down, up and down… His red-rimmed eyes and pale irises stare at her as if she's the one that desecrated him as if he’s the one that hurts so much.

He sniffles, even. It is, perhaps, his favourite thing to do, alone in that obscure room of his, among his liquor bottles and expensive dark trinkets.

Self-pity was never that disgusting than on this man.

It wasn’t him that had to stare at those… abominations. Nor his lungs that took in the blood-stained air, nor his innermost parts that were bleeding, purging the remnants of their foul union. And for what? For keeping the blood pure, for keeping the fortune within the family?

“Odette, my love…”

She cannot bear his voice. It's like nails on a chalkboard.

She should have pushed him away the first time, she should have slapped him when his kiss proved a bite and his love-making a form of torture delivered specially for her. His ugly little noises as he spent his vile seed inside of her, the creaking of the bed as he said she should rest in the days to come. His inattentiveness and his prolonged absences. His little rage-fits when she would give him the bad news. The spirits he so favoured.

She should have pushed it all away. 

“Cousin.” She counters. For that’s what he is, her cousin and it would do him well to remember that.

An alcoholic tremor goes through his fingers and he touches her on the shoulder, he lunges to give her a kiss but Odette expertly circumvents him, refuses him this small act of whoring.

She turns the other cheek, at least to avoid his pungent breath. She closes her eyes, to be spared to look at him with his pale face, now splotched with red and those misty eyes.

Will he miss her?

It doesn’t matter, for she isn’t coming back.

*

Her legs feel tired but she keeps going, her eyes are glued to the limbs of her jewel-encrusted pocket watch.

When the hour comes, Odette takes hold of the small, golden goblet and she’s pulled through space and time towards the sunny Tuscany.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an optional read connected to chapter 11 of my other fic, A Chest of Riddles that's mainly a Merope Gaunt POV.
> 
> 1\. Odette is a French given name that has Germanic origins, meaning "possessor of wealth".
> 
> 2\. The name Brutus was originally an old Roman family name, borne by Marcus Junius Brutus, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar. Brutus means "heavy, dull". Brutus is the quintessential brute, far too close to the word "brutal". 
> 
> Junius, on the other hand, is a name of Latin origin meaning "born in June".
> 
> 3\. Emmeline is a female medieval name, a short form of Germanic names beginning with the element "amal" meaning "work". It was introduced to England by the Normans. It also means gentle and brave.


End file.
